These instructions will help you connect Jira to a PostgreSQL database.

On this page:

• Before you begin
• 1. Create and configure the PostgreSQL database
• 2. Configure your server to connect to your PostgreSQL database
• 3. Start

Before you begin

• Check whether your version of PostgreSQL is supported. See Supported platforms.
• If you are migrating Jira to another server, create an export of your data as an backup. You will then be able to transfer data from your old database to your new database, as described in Switching databases.
• Shut down Jira before you begin, unless you are running the setup wizard.

1. Create and configure the PostgreSQL database

Accept remote TCP connections (remote PostgreSQL server only)

If you are connecting Jira to a remote PostgreSQL server (i.e. if your PostgreSQL server is not installed locally on your Jira server host system), you will need to configure your data/postgresql.conf and data/pg_hba.conf files to accept remote TCP connections from your Jira server's IP address.

The following PostgreSQL documentation contains information on the appropriate listen_addresses value in the postgresql.conf file as well as the pg_hba.conf file:

• PostgreSQL 11 documentation — Connections and Authentication
• PostgreSQL 10 documentation — Connections and Authentication
• PostgreSQL 9.6 documentation — Connections and Authentication

After you modify the data/postgresql.conf and data/pg_hba.conf files, restart PostgreSQL for the changes to take effect.

Create users and databases for your version of PostgreSQL

You can find information on creating users and databases for your version of PostgreSQL on their website.

1. Create a database user (login role) which Jira will connect as (e.g. jiradbuser).
   Remember this database user name, as it will be used to configure Jira's connection to this database in subsequent steps.

2. Create a database for Jira to store issues in (e.g. jiradb) with Unicode collation.
   Remember this database name, as it will be used to configure Jira's connection to this database in subsequent steps.

   CREATE DATABASE jiradb WITH ENCODING 'UNICODE' LC_COLLATE 'C' LC_CTYPE 'C' TEMPLATE template0;

   Or from the command-line:

   $ createdb -E UNICODE -l C -T template0 jiradb

3. Ensure that the user has permissions to connect to the database, and to create and write to tables in the database.

   
   

   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE <Database Name> TO <Role Name>

4. To verify that the privileges were granted successfully, connect to the database and run the \z command.

I'm using PostgreSQL 15 and my Jira can't create tables in the database

With PostgreSQL 15, there has been a change in the way table creation permissions are handled for users. PostgreSQL 15 revokes the CREATE permission from all users except a database owner from the public (or default) schema. According to the Postgres 15 documentation, you can fix it by creating a user-private schema for the Jira database user.

However, you can also grant the permission to the public schema by running the following commands:

1. Create the user that Jira will be using.

   postgres=# CREATE USER atlas WITH PASSWORD 'atlas';

2. Create the database.

   postgres=# CREATE DATABASE atlas WITH ENCODING 'UNICODE' LC_COLLATE 'C' LC_CTYPE 'C' TEMPLATE template0;

3. Grant the necessary privileges to the database:
   

   postgres=# GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE atlas TO atlas;

4. Connect to the database.

   postgres=# \c atlas postgres

    You are now connected to database atlas as user postgres.

5. Grant the required schema privileges:

   atlas=# GRANT ALL ON SCHEMA public TO atlas;

2. Configure your Jira server to connect to your PostgreSQL database

There are two ways to configure your Jira server to connect to your PostgreSQL database:

• Using the Jira setup wizard — Use this method if you have just installed Jira, and you are setting it up for the first time. Your settings will be saved to the dbconfig.xml file in your Jira home directory.
• Using the Jira configuration tool — Use this method if you have an existing Jira instance. Your settings will be saved to the dbconfig.xml file in your Jira home directory.

Instructions for each configuration method

Database connection fields

Sample dbconfig.xml file

For more information about the child elements of <jdbc-datasource/> beginning with pool in the dbconfig.xml file above, see Tuning database connections.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<jira-database-config>
  <name>defaultDS</name>
  <delegator-name>default</delegator-name>
  <database-type>postgres72</database-type>
  <schema-name>public</schema-name>
  <jdbc-datasource>
    <url>jdbc:postgresql://dbserver:5432/jiradb</url>
    <driver-class>org.postgresql.Driver</driver-class>
    <username>jiradbuser</username>
    <password>password</password>
    <pool-min-size>20</pool-min-size>
    <pool-max-size>20</pool-max-size>
    <pool-max-wait>30000</pool-max-wait>
    <pool-max-idle>20</pool-max-idle>
    <pool-remove-abandoned>true</pool-remove-abandoned>
    <pool-remove-abandoned-timeout>300</pool-remove-abandoned-timeout>
 
    <validation-query>select version();</validation-query>
    <min-evictable-idle-time-millis>60000</min-evictable-idle-time-millis>
    <time-between-eviction-runs-millis>300000</time-between-eviction-runs-millis>
  
    <pool-test-on-borrow>false</pool-test-on-borrow>
	<pool-test-while-idle>true</pool-test-while-idle>

  </jdbc-datasource>
</jira-database-config>

3. Start Jira

You should now have Jira configured to connect to your PostgreSQL database. The next step is to start it up!

 Congratulations, you now have Jira connected to your PostgreSQL database.